Telecommunications service providers are more competitive than ever before as the cost of telecommunications services and network resources have dramatically decreased over the years due to improved technology and more competition. As a result, telecommunications service providers compete in a variety of different ways to attract new subscribers, maintain existing subscribers, and increase spend by subscribers for network services.
One problem that exists with consumer-facing companies is the use of contractually obligated promotional offers to compete for new subscribers. Such promotional offers bind the company in being obligated to support legacy services and, in the case of telecommunications service providers, network provisioning and resources must be maintained for long periods of time, sometimes unlimited amounts of time depending on the promotional offer and service plans that are used to attract and maintain subscribers. Such offers result in the company losing money simply due to having to meet the contractual obligations. As an example, offers of network resources, such as a certain amount (e.g., 500 MB) of data communications that last a lifetime that are offered to new subscribers, cause the telecommunications service provider to have to maintain the obligated network resources until the customer fully consumes the network resources. As understood in the art, network resources may include a wide variety of sources used to support subscriber usage, such as memory in a data repository, bandwidth on communications lines, phone numbers, network addresses, local network voice capacity, international network voice capacity, data streaming capacity, messaging capacity, and so on.
Over time, the contractually obligated resources becomes a major liability for a telecommunications service provider, especially a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), for a number of reasons, such as having to pay for a telephone number whether or not being utilized by a customer, maintain allocated network resources provided by third parties, manage accounts, etc. Certain service plans that are relatively low margin, such as Lifeline service plans that are paid by the government for low income people, are particularly competitive such that network resource incentives are given to drive subscribers to the telecommunications service providers offering the incentives. The subscribers, however, often do not fully utilize the contractually obligated network resources, but those network resources still have to be maintained. Moreover, if a customer moves, dies, or is otherwise incapacitated and the telecommunications service provider is not notified of the customer's status, the allocated network resources may remain and cost the service provider. Alternatively, the service provider may spend a lot of money to track down the status of the customer in an attempt to alleviate the maintenance costs of the allocated network resources.
In the event that the contractual obligations of the allocated network resources are not met by the communications service provider, consumer fraud charges and large fines may result from both consumer complaints, class action litigation, and governmental litigation. As a result, there is a need to reduce or eliminate obligated network resources that result from promotional offers and service plans.